


Screaming

by splkespiegel



Category: Welcome to Hell - All Media Types
Genre: Other, prepare for the tears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 00:17:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3430919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splkespiegel/pseuds/splkespiegel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mephistopheles always wonders why he ends up pegged with most of the paperwork and all of the stigma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Screaming

Mephistopheles was sat behind a rather frightening stack of paperwork waiting to be filled out. There had been a big transfer of souls from purgatory to Providence’s realm, and since purgatory was a form of repentance and punishment, he was responsible for all the people in there as well as those in his own dominion. As if he didn’t have enough work to do already.

  
He grumbled quietly as he flew up to drawer 512 of his file cabinet. He couldn’t remember his last day off, his whole life was a stream of documents going out of the office and a new batch coming in. Why did everyone think _he_ was the bad guy? He was the one running the whole damned place! Providence had it easy up there while he had to toil in the pit to make sure Hell was getting renovated. He only had to do it so that Sinnergy could compete with Angelcy, and somehow that fact made it worse. He never did anything for himself anymore.

  
Still seething, he finally found the file he was looking for and all but crashed back into his chair. He found it a wonder that the thing hadn’t busted yet.

  
The longer he worked, the more frustrated he got, until he finally threw his pen down and took a break with at least another hour’s worth of transfer forms still left blank. He considered popping in on Sock for a moment but decided against it. The kid was fine, and the last thing Sock needed was the full force of Mephistopheles’ emotional baggage on his shoulders.

  
That was what it was, after all – emotional baggage. Every now and again he let himself admit that the only reason he got so worked up about _her_ was because he still wasn’t over her. Providence had clearly finished coping with what they used to be and moved on to focus on what they were now: business partners. Well, business partners who bickered and teased like a married couple when they had to work with each other, but their conversations were still mostly restricted to facts and figures.

  
_Business partners._ Mephistopheles let the term sit in his mind on top of the crockpot of things he’d tucked away a long time ago. He knew it would burst any time now, and put a lot of his focus into staving that explosion off until a less inopportune time. Which was probably never, in his opinion.

  
He opened up one of the lower drawers of his desk and heaved a leather-bound book out of its depths. He knew he was getting himself down shit creek without a paddle, but at that point, he didn’t care.

  
He cracked it open to a page he suspected he could’ve found in his sleep. It held two pictures from… sometime. He never managed to get his head around the concept of time and dates, despite how many times Sock broke it down for him on his days off. He could only imagine how long ago it was based off of where the picture was taken.

  
Before Providence had finished creating the universe, she had an idea for something she wanted to put on some of the planets she was planning. She called it a beach, a place that rested right up against the coast of bodies of water where the ground was covered in sand (very, very tiny rocks, if he remembered how she had described it correctly). That was when they had just started out, when they were still together.

  
When they were still happy.

  
Mephistopheles ran his fingers over his favorite of the two. Providence had set up a camera, some device she’d made for fun that could record singular moments in time, behind the two of them, and put it on a timer. The photo showed them holding hands and sitting in front of the water and the sky. It was at that perfect part of the day where the two seem to meld into each other to create a single, brilliant expanse of blue.

  
Even if he hadn’t had the picture, he could still remember that moment as if it had just passed. Providence was so beautiful that day, even more so than every other day, somehow. Normally talkative and annoying, he sat in silence as he watched her admire what great work she’d done on her very first beach. Of all the things they did together, he couldn’t remember a time when he was more in love with her than that one.

  
He only realized that he was crying when reddish droplets fell onto the page. He set the book aside and directed all of his attention to stopping the breakdown before it happened.

  
Mephistopheles wondered if this was the dreaded explosion as he pressed his head into his hands and sobbed. He had always expected it to fuel some sort of rampage up to the heavens where he would shout Providence and her whole army of angels down. Instead he just screamed at himself for fucking everything up.


End file.
